A Study On Adjectives Of Describing People In Senior High School Students' Compositions

According to New Curriculum Standards, language knowledge includes pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, function and topic. It can be seen from this that vocabulary, to senior high school students and foreign language learners, is very important. However, adjective plays a decisive role as one of substantives in vocabulary. Most study subjects are college or university students in the numerous researches of adjectives which are rarely involved senior high school students as study subjects. This thesis regards 94 senior high school students in Grade 1 in one senior high school in Chang Chun as study subjects. And the thesis studies on the students'compositions and two tests. It aims to research the current situation of adjectives acquisition of senior high school students.This thesis studies the current situation of adjectives acquisition of senior high school students through their compositions according to New Curriculum Standards. The research questions of this thesis are (1) What are the highly frequent adjectives in senior high school students'compositions? (2) What are the patterns of the adjectives in senior high school students'compositions? (3)What are the depth and breadth of adjectives in senior high school students'compositions?The composition of this thesis requires students to describe people who have no special restrictions. This thesis focuses on the above research questions based on those compositions and the tests and points out the highly frequent adjectives, the adjectives'patterns and the breadth and the depth of adjectives in students'compositions and the tests. In order to measure the breadth and the depth of adjectives, two tests which are based on the theories of Gui Shichun and Nation are designed. And the author also analyzes the breadth and depth of adjectives through these two tests by SPSS 17.0.Research findings showed that the most frequently used adjectives are static adjectives describing person's appearance in senior high school students'compositions. The patterns of adjectives are ADJ + Noun, V-link + ADJ, ADV + ADJ, Noun + ADJ and ADJ + enough + to-infinite in senior high school students'compositions. The breadth and the depth of adjectives in senior high school students' compositions are correlated to each other. The depth of adjectives does not achieve the criterion of New Curriculum Standards, but the breadth of adjectives does.At last, it is concluded that adjectives should be drew attention and different students should have different methods to gain adjectives and English words. Teachers should care about the adjectives teaching in the English class and summarize the manifestations of all kinds of adjectives and even let them know how to distinguish the adjectives from other class of vocabulary. Teachers should encourage students to read more English materials to gain more English adjectives and adjectives'patterns to improve the understanding of adjectives.